The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings - Villeterque's Review of Les Crimes de l'Amour and Sade's Reply Summary & Analysis

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Villeterque's review of Sade's "Les Crimes de l'Amour" is a highly dismissive and sarcastic response to Sade's controversial work. His opinion is summed up in the first sentence, "A detestable book by a man suspected of having written one even more horrible" (p. 117.)

Villeterque dismisses the brief history of the novel that Sade offers in "Reflections on the Novel" as being irrelevant and "riddled with errors" (p. 117.) He attacks Sade's notion that showing virtue "overrun" by vice in the plot of a novel moves the reader toward sympathy with the virtuous. Villeterque believes that this is not Sade's actual intention, but that he simply wishes to be provocative. Portraying evil winning over virtue does not inspire the virtuous, Villeterque argues, but awakens "evil tendencies in the wicked" (p. 118.) He...